April 30, 1993 changed the world of tennis. At Hamburg’s Rothenbaum, Monica Seles is stabbed by a mentally disturbed man. She’s still lucky.
Monica Seles takes a deep breath. She looks tense and a little exhausted. After a seven-week tournament break, the tennis star hasn’t really found his rhythm again. In the quarter-finals of the clay court event at Hamburg’s Rothenbaum, the world number one still leads 6: 4, 4: 3 against Bulgarian Magdalena Maleeva.
Seles, even in bad shape, is too good for the competition at this time. She is an exceptional player. The Serbo-Croatian now needs eight points to get a little closer to the dream final against her constant rival Steffi Graf.
When changing sides, Seles sits down on the white bench next to the referee’s chair. She leans over to her water bottle, takes a sip and wipes the sweat from her forehead. This movement, the doctors say later, probably saved her from being in a wheelchair today.
A loud scream silences thousands of spectators on Center Court. Seles staggers toward the web. A commotion breaks out in the row behind her bench. The situation is unclear. These are moments that change the world of tennis.
Knife attack during the game break
At first it is unclear what exactly happened on that warm spring evening of April 30, 1993 at Rothenbaum. Seles can no longer stand on his feet. She collapses in front of the net and is now lying on the red ashes. “It was a crueler pain than I could have ever imagined,” she later says. Helpers rush over to take care of the Serbo-Croatian.
Her white shirt has blood on her back. Meanwhile, in the first row of seats, a man is overpowered by several people. He holds a knife in his raised hands, wants to stab a second time, and fights back with all his might. His baseball hat falls to the ground during the fight. And also the long butcher knife he used to stab Seles in the shoulder earlier.
“Man with a malicious grin on his face”
The inconspicuous but also sinister-looking man with the unkempt hairdo and the patterned purple shirt is taken away. His name is Günter Parche. He comes from Thuringia, is unemployed and a paranoid admirer of Steffi Graf, whom he wants to see back on the tennis throne. “Frau Graf was a goddess for him. Not in the profane sense, but a goddess that would never have been within reach for him,” explained Parche lawyer Otmar Kury.
Seles will no longer be able to erase the perpetrator from her memory. In her 2009 biography, she describes the moments that changed her life: “Immediately I turned around and saw a man with a malicious, sneering grin on his face. In his hand: a long knife! He put it millimeters off my spine stabbed. Doctors later told me if I hadn’t bent over at that moment I could have been paralyzed.”
When seconds change life
Seles is lucky in misfortune. Physically, she bears no permanent damage. The shoulder blade remains intact, the puncture only injured muscle and fibrous tissue. Doctors predict that with a bit of luck, she will be able to start training again in five weeks.
Two days after the assassination, the then 19-year-old was visited by Steffi Graf. The German stays only a few minutes in the hospital. She has to go to Rothenbaum to play the final against the Spaniard Arantxa Sánchez Vicario.
Big rivals at the beginning of the 1990s: Monica Seles (left) and Steffi Graf.
Seles is distraught. She had assumed that the event was canceled after the attack. But the tennis circus moves on – initially without the best player in the world before the attack. The teenager doesn’t have the strength for a quick comeback. “I was stabbed, on the tennis court, in front of ten thousand people. It’s not possible to talk about it from a distance. It irrevocably changed my career and damaged my soul. A split second made me a different person,” Seles later wrote in her biography .
After the assassination, she struggles with anxiety, depression and nightmares. Only after psychological therapy can she return to the WTA tour in August 1995 – more than two years after Günter Parche’s insane act.
“Can’t understand why he didn’t have to pay”
While Seles is constantly struggling with the aftermath of the attack, the perpetrator gets away with a two-year suspended sentence. The unemployed lathe operator is certified in court as having a “highly abnormal personality structure” and reduced ability to control. Seles is horrified: “I can’t understand why this person didn’t have to pay for his crime.”
A claim for damages in the amount of 12.2 million euros against the German Tennis Association as the organizer of the Rothenbaum tournament also fails. After the assassination, Seles no longer competes in Germany. “This is the country that didn’t sufficiently punish the man who attacked me,” she says bitterly.
After the assassination, Monica Seles no longer played a tournament on German soil.
Assassin Parche dies in 2022
Although Seles enjoyed some notable success after her comeback, today’s American will never regain her form. In 2003 she denies her last professional match. Constant back and foot problems then prevent a planned return to the WTA tour. In 2008 Seles officially ended her career, which might have been even more successful if it hadn’t been for April 30, 1993 at Rothenbaum.
Parche died in August 2022 at the age of 68 in a nursing home in Nordhausen, Thuringia. There he had spent the last 14 years of his life after several strokes.
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sports club | 04/23/2023 | 11:35 p.m
